Ross Sawyers’ magical mystery tour

Ross Sawyers builds models that he photographs as full-scale environments. After Thomas Demand, Oliver Boberg and James Casebere, it’s a popular strategy, but Sawyers makes it personal by delivering, through the barest of means, a kind of magical mystery tour.

The air swells through a sheet of plastic as if it’s pregnant in “Untitled, Blue, Sky 5.” Most of his images appear to be spaces under construction, and what’s outside is not your friend.

These photographers are all working off the idea of a doll house. Interesting that it’s a male strategy. I can’t think of a single woman mining this vein.

Thursday night, 5:30-8, there’s a bon voyage at Platform Gallery for Sawyers and his wife, Cynthia, who are moving to the University of California, Riverside, where Sawyers has a teaching job. He graduated last year with an MFA from the UW, proving that teaching jobs, though rare, are not yet extinct.

Also in Pioneer Square that night are Mark Takamichi Miller and Sean M. Johnson, opening at Howard House, and Hugo Ludeña, opening at Greg Kucera.